Take the Interview Takes Manhattan in Strategic and Practical Maneuver

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add up to six new hires in sales and marketing, as well as the development team. “At this stage we budgeted most of our dollars to development,” Weinblatt says. Take the Interview currently has a staff of five full-timers.

With talent being quickly snatched up these days in New York, Weinblatt says she wants to offer market rate salaries to her hires. “We really want to be competitive in the startup market even through we are early stage,” she says. “Talented people need to get paid market rates.”

She has already scored one interesting prospect by recruiting Ty Abernethy as vice president of operations. Abernethy previously ran ZuZuHire, a competing human resource video interview startup in Atlanta. He sold ZuZuHire last summer to a British job board, but its ultimate fate seems uncertain. The website for ZuZuHire is closed, though according to an October post on its Facebook page this is temporary while ZuZuHire adjusts its strategy. Weinblatt met Abernethy at the end of 2011 after he moved to New York, and early this year she persuaded him to join the Take the Interview team.

Though Take the Interview is still early-stage, its platform is being used by a variety of outlets. Weinblatt says General Assembly uses Take the Interview to screen some of the startups and instructors it brings in. Other customers include Boston University, Harvard Business School, Compushare, Clickable, and FirstMark Capital. The retailer Toys “R” Us will give the platform a try in a pilot program for recruiting new hires on a college campus. Startup America Partnership will also use the platform for its internship hiring, a process which is expected to start by the beginning of March.

Weinblatt says video represents the future of human resources by helping recruiters better understand who will be the right fit for the team. “We’re a disruptive company,” she says. “We’re telling people that what they’re doing in terms of traditional methods of screening and recruiting candidates is inefficient.”

João-Pierre S. Ruth is the editor of Xconomy New York. He can be reached at jpruth@xconomy.com and followed on Twitter @jpruth. Follow @jpruth